Gweru residents spend 3 months with garbage

SOME parts of Gweru city have reportedly clocked three months without Gweru City Council (GCC) collecting refuse.

This has resulted in Gweru residents blaming GCC for failing to court the corporate world to assist in refuse collection.

Gweru Residents and Ratepayers Association executive director, Cornelius Selipiwe said council's failure to collect refuse had resulted in the proliferation of dumping sites in the Midlands city.

"The council is responding to the backlog of refuse collection, in wards 1, 4, 10 and 17 that had not been attended to for the past three months or more due to shortage of refuse compactors. This has led to illegal dumpsites around the city of Gweru. We are happy that council is responding to our pleas," Selipiwe said.

"We need GCC to be proactive and change its time schedules as this shouldn't happen in future. We are getting into summer and with this heat there is likelihood of an outbreak of diseases if garbage is not collected on time."

Selipiwe urged GCC to invest in good public relations with the corporate world to assist in service delivery, while also criticising council for lack of transparency and accountability.

GCC spokesperson Vimbai Chingwaramusee said: "Refuse compactors have been down for some time, but they have now been fixed. In future as a local authority we will need to come up with strategies to engage the private sector so that it collects refuse.

We will intensify refuse collection by replicating what Bulawayo does. Instead of collecting refuse once per week, we will do it thrice per week."